


Miles Between

by mammothluv



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Female Characters, Female Protagonist, Female-Centric, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-05
Updated: 2011-04-05
Packaged: 2017-10-17 15:27:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/178292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mammothluv/pseuds/mammothluv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Izzie tries to find her way again after leaving Seattle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Miles Between

**Author's Note:**

> Grey's Anatomy belongs to Shonda Rimes and ABC. I'm not making any profit and no copyright infringement is intended.  
> This is was written for waltzmatildah who so kindly bid on me in the fandomaid Queensland flood relief auction. Thank you and I hope you enjoy it! Many thanks to my betas,leobrat and ellie_kat89.

_As a child, Izzie excelled in make-believe._

 _She'd forgo the usual princesses or celebrities in favor of being a doctor. Usually, her patients consisted of a sorry looking collection of dolls but sometimes, if her mother wasn't out working or on a date and Izzie caught her in just the right mood, Izzie could get her to play along._

 _If Izzie consented to let her be a wealthy heiress or a supermodel (even at six years old, Izzie would roll her eyes at her mother's runway walk) Robbie would agree to act out whatever ailment Izzie came up with._

 _Often, despite Izzie's best efforts, her mother would decide the illness was too serious to be survived and would take to dying with great gusto. She would wheeze loudly, clasp her head or her stomach and then close her eyes and allow her head to fall limply to her chest._

 _After a few seconds, Izzie would shake Robbie awake and beg her to start over, sure that with just one more try she could heroically save the dying heiress. This time she'd run every test imaginable, shining a flashlight in her mother's eyes, ears and mouth and, after serious consideration, plastering a few Band-Aids over various body parts. And, because this time Izzie got it just right, Robbie would make a miraculous full recovery just in time to make her film debut or marry the man of her dreams._

 _It's a technique Izzie carried with her and perfected in her adult life, the art of starting over. She got good at pretending to fit in until she did, at acting like everything was okay until it was. It's how she got through giving up her daughter. It’s how she made it out of the trailer park and through med school and eventually to Seattle Grace. It’s how she survived._

 _The thing with Seattle was, for the first time Izzie could remember, she stopped acting. She stopped feeling like that little girl playing pretend and became Dr. Stevens. It was in Seattle where she became somebody's wife, became part of a family. And make-believe? It's not so easy anymore._

 _It's the reason Seattle felt like home but it's also the reason she couldn't stay when things fell apart. She needs to be that old Izzie again, the one who knew how to fake her way through until things got better. But, Alex, Meredith, even Cristina, they know her. And, as difficult as was to leave, that means she can't do this getting better thing with them watching.  
_   
**February 27**

The new surgical program she managed to talk her way into lasts less than a month.

She's been so busy fighting her own body that she doesn't have the energy for twenty four hour shifts and fighting her fellow residents for surgeries. Her breaking point finally comes during a grueling night-shift in the emergency room. By the end of her shift her head is pounding, her whole body aches and, when the neuro attending offers her the chance to stay and scrub in on endonasal endoscopy, she actually says no.

The next day, she hands her resignation to the Chief of Surgery, a man from whom she was begging for a chance just a few weeks ago. She anticipates his disappointment, maybe even anger. But he's kind and sympathetic, says he has an old friend from med school who runs a family clinic that might be more her speed.

She smiles gratefully, tries to ignore the taste of defeat rising in the back of her throat.

 **March 5**

She ends up in Florida of all places, a small town just a few minutes north of Tampa. She rents a one-bedroom apartment just a few blocks from the beach. It's small and unremarkable but late at night, when the traffic has died down and there are no sounds coming from the street below, she can hear the ocean.

It's not until she's settled in that she realizes she didn't even consider roommates.

She orders a few pieces of furniture online and tries not to think of the comfortable warmth of Meredith's house. She tries even harder not to remember decorating the trailer with Alex, the easy way he laughed when she tripped over his feet and toppled into him as they tried unsuccessfully to hang curtains.

There's a picture of her and Alex from their wedding that she puts on top of her bookcase for a few days before hiding it face down in a drawer.

She's never sure how much she wants to remember.

 **March 17**

The clinic is small, with only a few doctors and one other resident. Izzie has enough experience from Denny's clinic that she picks up the routine quickly. Her coworkers have families and lives outside of work. As far as she knows, there are no supply closet hookups or dramatic coworker breakups. She begins to wonder if Seattle Grace was just an anomaly.

The first few weeks she feels like she does nothing but prescribe morning after pills for girls on spring break. She feels like there’s something she should tell them, something no one ever said to her when she was that young. But it always escapes her before she can find the words.

She finds herself sitting on a bench outside the clinic on her lunch break looking at the clinic and imagining the looming presence of Seattle Grace in front of her instead. She has time for regular lunch breaks now. Her days unravel slowly, a sharp contrast to the hectic pace of surgical residency. There are few emergencies at the clinic. There's a routine, an order to things. There's an overwhelming sense of time. Some days she breathes it in like fresh air after too long spent holding her breath, other days it's a nearly unbearable weight pressing in on her.

She misses the immediacy of surgery, the knowledge that her decisions had the power to save a life right in that moment. She has to make a concerted effort to still her hand when she realizes she's unconsciously been miming the movements of a scalpel. She shivers and pulls her sweater more tightly around her shoulders, the Florida heat still not enough to erase the chill that settled in when she began her treatments and hasn't left yet.

 **April 21**

Izzie gets up and makes cupcakes for George's birthday, even though she lives alone now, even though George is gone. They're orange chocolate, his favorite. A sweet tangy scent fills her apartment as the cupcakes bake, helps her remember the easy way he used to smile.

She can picture him rushing down the stairs at Meredith's house, grabbing a cupcake from her hands before she'd even finished frosting. She can almost see his wide grin as he says thank you around a mouthful of cake. They'd sit at the table, with cupcakes and black coffee and she'd tell him to make a birthday wish, and unlike Meredith or Alex or Cristina, George would actually do it. He'd close his eyes tightly and concentrate for a moment before opening them again and taking another sip of his coffee. He always refused to tell her what he'd wished for.

Izzie would have snuck into Meredith's room in the morning to remind her about George's birthday. And Meredith would have grumbled something about 'five more minutes' while rolling over and pulling the covers over her head. But eventually she would stumble downstairs and mumble a happy birthday to George as she filled her mug with coffee. She’d complain about the combination of fruit and chocolate being unnatural but eat a cupcake anyway. George would grab one more cupcake for the road and race them to the car, ecstatic that Meredith remembered his birthday. Izzie wonders if Meredith remembers today.

When they’re baked and frosted, Izzie sits down at her kitchen table and eats a cupcake slowly. She closes her eyes and, just for a second, she can pretend he's right here with her.

"Happy birthday, George," she whispers into the quiet stillness of her apartment. The cold reality of his absence stings all the more when she opens her eyes to see the empty chair that sits across from her.

 **May 2**

One night when Izzie's juggling two bags of groceries and trying to open her apartment door she hears a soft southern accent saying, "Let me help." And suddenly a woman who looks a few years younger than Izzie is taking the groceries from her hand so Izzie can open the door.

Carrie lives across the hall and has just moved to Florida from Georgia. Sometimes they order delivery for dinner and watch bad TV together. They talk about work and mock the unfortunate fashion choices of the contests on whatever reality show they happen to be watching.

Carrie doesn't know all of Izzie's secrets, doesn't know any of them really. They don't talk about their families, their lives. If Carrie notices the way Izzie tenses at any mention of her life before Florida or the medications lined up neatly on Izzie's bathroom counter, she doesn't say. Sometimes, if Izzie ignores that undefined yearning that constantly rattles in the back of her skull, she finds herself laughing and smiling as she lifts another forkful of food to her mouth.

Because it all feels so hollow sometimes but it's also freeing the way it all feels brand new, the way she's starting to feel like someone new. If her mind wanders to an image of her, Meredith, and George sprawled on Meredith's bed with a shared pint of strawberry ice cream, she doesn't allow it to stay there for long.

 **May 20**

She's chopping tomatoes for dinner, the TV on because she's grown to like the background noise. At first she thinks it's her mind playing tricks on her when she hears the words 'Seattle Grace-Mercy West Hospital.' But soon her heart is beating double-time in her chest as she watches the national news coverage.

The gunman is dead, the newscaster says, and the hospital is being evacuated. She can't focus on the word 'casualties' at the bottom of the screen and it takes her a moment to realize that's because she is crying.

She can’t bring herself to try calling Alex, Meredith or Cristina, not even Bailey or one of the attendings. She’s too afraid they won’t answer, too afraid of what that might mean. Instead she calls Seattle Grace and, when there’s no answer there, the nearest hospital where she knows the evacuated patients would have been transferred. Her dread and frustration grow every time she’s directed to another number or told there’s nothing they can tell her.

“We can only give that information to family,” one nurse says. Izzie wants to scream, _I am family… I was._

Finally, Izzie thinks to call Joe's. She doesn't recognize the voice of the bartender who answers the phone. He tries to get rid of her when she asks for Joe. "It's been a rough night," he says.

"Please. Just tell him it's Izzie Stevens."

She doesn't let out the breath she's holding until she hears Joe's voice say, "Izzie?"

"Please, tell me what you know." She can't keep the desperate edge out of her voice.

Joe knows pretty much everything. Many of those who made it and aren't still at the hospital have gathered at Joe's to wait for information, to console one another. Izzie’s breaths come faster and she doesn't bother trying to hold back the tears as Joe says the names she's been trying so hard to push out of her mind these past few months. All the love and grief she's been holding at bay swells up within her multiplied by a thousand.

Their lives changed today, irrevocably changed. And nothing Izzie does now will change the fact that she wasn’t there, that they fought this battle without her.

When she hangs up, she tries to picture them, tries to picture Meredith waiting for news on Derek. She wonders if they'd all grown closer to Reed and Charles since she left, if they're mourning them now.

Mostly she thinks about Alex. Joe made a point of telling her that everything he'd heard said Alex was going to be okay but still she can't help picturing him in a hospital bed, can't help cataloging the list of organs the bullet could have hit and the possible complications. She remembers the warmth of him when, at her urging, he'd crawl into her hospital bed with her after treatments. The sound of his breathing in her ear was the only thing that could soothe her to sleep some nights.

She hopes someone is by his bedside now. She thinks about the vows they took, how she promised that someone would be her.

She doesn't sleep that night and at 3 a.m. she finds herself in her car driving to the airport. She parks the car and walks inside to the nearest ticket counter, credit card in hand, ready to ask for the very next flight to Seattle.

She's not sure if it's an act of compassion or cowardice when, hands still shaking, she shoves her credit card back into her wallet and forces her feet back in the direction of her car.

 **July 17**

Mr. Miller comes in almost once a week. Unlike Seattle Grace would have, the clinic doesn't turn him away once they realize there's really nothing wrong with him. He walks from the senior citizen's home across the street. His kids, she learns through the course of their visits, dropped him off three months ago and haven't been back to visit since.

Izzie quickly becomes his favorite doctor, she suspects because she's the only one of the women who plays along with his shameless flirting. She feels a kinship with him. She knows all to well what it's like to know people whose lives you were supposed to be a part of are moving on without you

He has an appointment on Thursday so she stays up Wednesday night baking sugar free muffins. There's probably some regulation against it, baking for a patient. She knows if she were in Seattle, Bailey would have called her out on it in a second. But Izzie doesn't care. She became a doctor for a lot of reasons, to prove herself, to get away from the trailer park but mostly she became a doctor because she liked making people feel better. And, sometimes, that takes muffins.

She takes his temperature and vitals. When everything seems fine she asks if he'd like to sit with her on her break. She grabs the box of muffins and leads him to her favorite bench, just across the street. They sit quietly, eating and watching the occasional passerby.

"I fought moving to this home for so long," he finally says. "Now that I'm here, I can't help but feel like I've given up."

"You can't call it giving up. Try to think of it as regrouping," she says. She leans into him a little as she says it, nudging him with her shoulder. “You're only done when you say you're done, Mr. Miller."

He chuckles, low and deep. "You've got a gift for spin, kid. And you make a damn good muffin."

Izzie laughs too and, for the first time in months, she feels like a doctor again.

 **August 4**

Eight months after leaving Seattle Grace for good, Meredith is the one she finally calls. There's nothing special about the day or Izzie's mood. She just finds herself scrolling through her phone until she reaches Meredith's name and, unlike every other time, she presses send.

She is caught off guard when Meredith actually picks up. The first thing she can think of to say is, "I made cupcakes for George's birthday."

As usual, Meredith doesn't question. "I miss him," she replies. "I miss you too, Izzie."

"I miss you too," Izzie says without thinking. It's a relief, for a second, not pretending none of it matters anymore.

They talk for a few minutes and Meredith sounds like Izzie remembers mostly, but more tempered, weathered, like Izzie feels.

"I wish you'd come home," Meredith says when they're saying goodbye.

Izzie doesn't bother to protest, to pretend 'home' isn't an accurate description. She just takes a deep breath and says, "I can't. Not now. Maybe someday."

She doesn’t know the truth in it until she says it out loud. _Maybe someday._ She doesn’t know how long she’ll be here or where she’ll go next but, someday, she wants to go home.  



End file.
